Reality Destroyed by “Explosive Solipsism”?

An extra long reply to a reply by Chris Bateman at his “Magical Science” post at Stranger Worlds.

Hi Chris,

I would like to address one of your replies at your “Magical Science” post at Stranger Worlds:

“For now, let me just make the point that the conventional way of talking about ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ (which is a corruption of Kant’s philosophy) assumes as many ‘subjective realities’ as people and one ‘objective reality’. This is not a viable way of thinking about these issues, except as an unbelievably crude approximation. If there is one objective reality, we do not have access to it (this is Kant’s actual point), but more importantly the contents of those subjective realities cannot create as many different realities as people. Far from it. The very meaning of the word ‘reality’ could not survive this explosive solipsism.”

“Our different sense impressions and our different suppositions make us separate minds, but they do not put us into separate realities. But here, and elsewhere, the concept of ‘reality’ is much more porous than the subjective-objective split makes it seem.”

We’ve previously touched on how I, at least at present, model reality, but with these words it seems to me that I need to try to understand your position. To that end, for starters, I’ve going to try to carefully describe my thinking and ask ChatGPT to comment on your remarks in the light of my description.

I. Definitions

consciousness – it seems to me that fundamentally I experience three states of consciousness: being-in-the-world, nothingness, and dreaming. As I draft these words, I am experiencing many sensations that accompany my being-in-the-world: the pen on my fingers, the appearance of these words on a page in my notebook, etc., etc. That is, the ordinary experiences must of us have most of the time. In a few hours I will experience nothingness. How can I experience nothingness? I can’t. What I will experience is being-in-the-world at one moment, and then being in a slightly different world in a subsequent moment. If I then look at a clock or some other manifestation of time passing, I will notice that between the two moments of being-in-the-world awareness some time has passed. I’ve just “experienced” nothing[ness].

During such a brief early afternoon nap nothingness is probably all that I’ll experience. But some hours later, in a time period all humans call ‘sleep’, periods of nothingness may be punctuated by experiences of being-in-the-world, but in a weird sort of way, which, when I’m back to being-in-the-world, I call ‘dreaming’.

In my subsequent remarks here, ‘consciousness’ refers just to my ‘being-in-the-world’ state. In this state I recognize just four aspects of consciousness: sensations, perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.[1] In this reply I’m just concerned with thoughts.

entity -- in my consciousness entities are the most fundamental element of my thoughts about what is. There are several ways of pointing to an entity. The most common is via a noun or noun phrase. An entity can be part of other entities. Entities have attributes and may have relationships with other entities. Is there any way of asserting anything at all without pointing, directly or indirectly, to at least one entity?

reality – that which is. But what does that mean? In my thinking I distinguish between entities that I imagine, and those for which I’m nearly 100% certain have an existence outside of my consciousness. In this way I conceive of two ‘realities’: one that only I am conscious of, my own subjective reality, and a single objective reality whose interaction with my physical body provides the stimuli that my brain uses to construct my subjective reality.

Furthermore, it appears to me that the characteristics and behaviors of man-made entities such as symphonies and constitutions are so different from those that were not constructed by humans, that for purpose of understanding I divide objective reality into social reality and physical reality. From your previous comments I gather that such a distinction creates additional philosophical problems. To lay these aside in what follows I am using ‘objective reality’ to refer only to entities that exist, or could exist sans the existence of any human beings. As I understand your remarks, such a distinction is immaterial.

II. Comments

A) Re: Access to a presumed single objective reality:
Our access to objective reality is an intrinsic part of what is. ‘What is’ is that we are so constructed that from the dynamic electrochemical signals that originate via the interaction of our sense organs with objective reality, we are all compelled to create models that “explain”, to our emotional satisfaction, these signals.

Once our minds evolved to the point where we could evaluate our models of objective reality two additional processes occur:

1) As each of us interacts with objective reality via every action we take, we refine/replace our models to be consistent with our experience of this interaction.

2) Once we invented language we could contrast and compare our individual models of objective reality with those of others. Depending on our evaluation of these models we could adjust/replace our own models.

Under this view the only way I can understand the claim that “we do not have access to” objective reality is to assume that our current understanding of some of the entities and processes of objective reality is at best only accidental.

B) Re: “explosive solipsism”:
You: “but more importantly the contents of those subjective realities cannot create as many different realities as people. Far from it. The very meaning of the word ‘reality’ could not survive this explosive solipsism.”

I must admit that I have yet to fully grasp the concepts on which, presumably, this remark is made. Probably because I don’t fully understand Kant’s modeling of noumena and phenomena. I’ll make a stab at improving my understanding of Kant below.

It seems to me that at the level of dendrite connections and the flow of molecules and electric currents through these connections and along neurons, no two human brains can be said to be identical. Although I cannot claim that it logically follows that every human mind is unique, it appears to me that such a claim is more than likely true. However, there are several reasons why the uniqueness of each of our minds and hence our subjective realities does not result in an “explosive solipsism”:

1) To stay alive each of us must successfully and continually interact with the same objective reality. All of these actions are dictated by our individually unique models of various aspects of objective reality but are constrained by the limited menu of possibly successful actions.

2) Through language each of us aligns our models with others, often adopting a public model wholesale.

Both of these mechanisms act to very much reduce the differences in our individually unique models.

In your remarks two years ago[1] you wrote “My own sense is that our species’ tendency to seek certainty is what makes the many-one split dangerous to work with.”

I completely agree. “Our different sense impressions and our different suppositions” not only “makes the many-one split dangerous to work with”, in our present era it has the potential to lead to the near-term destruction of our First Worldwide Civilization, and a long-term possibility of ours being the last human civilization ever.

I personally find that holding fast to the notion that all of my own models are necessarily incomplete and potentially false, helps me connect with others with opposing views, and by truth-seeking dialogue and analysis increases the scope and accuracy of my own models.

III. Interaction with ChatGP

When I asked ChatGPT to critique the above it organized its relevant responses under the following headings:

a) You may be talking past Bateman on “access”
b) The strongest part of your argument is buried
c) A philosophical concern
d) The question I would put to Bateman

a) You may be talking past Bateman on “access”
This remark of ChatGPT’s is made in response to my contention that:

“Under this view the only way I can understand the claim that “we do not have access to” objective reality is to assume that our current understanding of some of the entities and processes of objective reality is at best only accidental.”

After summarizing its view of Kant’s position ChatGPT remarked:

Consequently, Bateman might respond:

“I am not claiming our knowledge is accidental. I am claiming that knowledge is necessarily mediated.”

I agree, ‘accidental’ is perhaps misleading. ‘Mediated’ might be better.

b) The strongest part of your argument is buried
ChatGPT:

Your strongest point, in my opinion, is here:

To stay alive each of us must successfully and continually interact with the same objective reality. This is very close to what philosophers sometimes call a pragmatic or evolutionary realism.

The argument runs roughly:

1. Humans survive by acting in the world.

2. Successful action requires models that track important features of the world.

3. Therefore, there must be substantial convergence between subjective models and objective reality.

This does not prove realism. But it explains why many subjective viewpoints do not produce chaos.

Me:
The above is one part of my argument. Other parts are my assertions that:

(1) Every life-form lives only and entirely within their own unique subjective reality.

(2) For humans, at least, every person’s subjective reality consists of (1) elements that are nearly identical to elements of other humans in their “community”, and

(3) elements that have arisen from that person’s unique low-level interaction with objective reality.

I submit that point (1) above follows from the fact that every life-form has a closed boundary that separates that life-form from everything else. Everything any life-form “knows” about objective reality must arise from, or take into account, all the “information” that crosses it’s boundary with external objective reality.

Unless our technology advances to the point where we can represent brain states with the same certainty that we represent binary computer states, we can never be absolutely certain of point (2). However, it certainly appears to me that everyone I interact with for nearly any purpose is perceiving just about everything in objective reality the same way that I am. [2]

c) A philosophical concern
ChatGPT:
You define reality as that which is and then divide reality into subjective reality and objective reality. Bateman may object that the term “reality” is now being used in two different senses.

Me:
Yes, this is so. Prior to having coherent models of how our brains worked we believed that the images/sounds in our minds were real. A few hundred years ago a few of us began to realize that this could not be so. Since then, we’ve steadily accumulated evidence that our perceptions of what’s out there are created by our brains, just as are the perceptions of other earth-bound life forms with brains. The brains of each of these kinds of life-forms are, except for some details, similar.

Nature has seen to it that the perceptions of each kind of higher-order animal life-form are essentially identical for that life-form, and are sufficient for enabling that life-form to successfully interact with what’s-out-there to survive and thrive. In this regard the subjective realities of each kind of such life form probably are nearly identical, but probably not unique.

However, human minds can create experiences of entirely imaginary entities. Similarly, human minds can create imaginary attributes and relationships for their perceptions of objective reality entities. In this regard the subjective reality of each and every person is unique.

What does anyone mean when someone expresses that something or such-and-such is real? I understand such an expression as a claim that what is being referenced has an existence outside of the speaker’s consciousness, that is, that what is being referenced is not just being imagined. It seems to me that this is what is usually meant by the word ‘reality’. It seems to me, however, that every person’s actions and feelings are influenced by things that are not universally agreed upon as existing in this sense, that often a person is not even conscious of such things. I use the phrase “subjective reality” to refer to the totality of the things that drive a person’s actions and feelings. Within everyone’s subjective reality is a subset of things that most everyone else agrees have an existence outside of anyone’s consciousness, that is, should all traces of human existence magically disappear, there would still be these things. I refer to the totality of these things as “objective reality”.

So, yes, I am using the term “reality” in two different ways by using “objective reality” and “subjective reality” to point to a productive way of dealing with what, for each individual human, is. Is there a better way of doing this?

d) The question I would put to Bateman
ChatGPT:
If I were condensing your entire comment into a single philosophical challenge, it would be:

If individual humans do not inhabit distinct subjective realities, what exactly distinguishes one person’s lived reality from another’s? And if those differences are substantial enough to matter philosophically, why is it misleading to describe them as distinct subjective realities?

That seems to get directly to the heart of the disagreement.
As an outside reader, I suspect the real issue is not whether there is one objective reality. Both of you appear to accept that possibility. The disagreement is over whether the word “reality” should also be applied to the unique world-model constructed by each conscious mind. That is a terminological question on the surface, but underneath it lies a deeper dispute about the relationship between experience, cognition, and what exists independently of either

Me:
I presume that your answer to the above questions would be Kantian. So, I asked ChatGPT:
Consider what Kant has said about noumena and phenomena that pertains to this issue. In particular address: “Kant was extremely prudent about establish what *could not* be said about his ‘noumena’ (the objective realm).” Give references.

In this comment I am of course looking at Kant through a filter. For the purposes of the present conversation I don’t think this matters.

Does my division of all that is into subjective and objective realities align with Kant’s (as rendered for me by ChatGPT)? ChatGPT says that it does NOT.

ChatGPT:
From our previous conversations, your notion of physical reality appears to be something like:

There exists a mind-independent reality consisting of entities and relationships. Individual humans construct mental models of that reality, but the reality itself exists regardless of what anyone thinks about it.

Your view is much closer to what philosophers call realism than to Kant’s transcendental idealism.

The temptation to equate your physical reality with Kant’s noumena comes from the fact that both are:

· independent of any particular person’s beliefs,

· not identical to anyone’s experience of them,

· the source or cause of what we experience.

However, Kant would object to an important part of your formulation. When you speak of physical reality, you typically seem willing to say things like:

· it contains entities,

· those entities have properties,

· those entities stand in relationships,

· science progressively discovers truths about those entities and relationships.

These are positive claims about reality.

Kant would regard such claims as legitimate only within the phenomenal world—that is, the world as it appears through human cognition

Me: I’ll cop to these ChatGPT comments. It seems to me that where I depart from Kant is that I think that some of my mental models are very likely to be essentially true. Some of my personal grounds for holding fast to this belief are:

-1. All repeatable human experience conforms to some of these models. For example, wherever I stand on the surface of Earth and drop a heavy object it will fall.

-2. Some of my models of objective reality appear to be both self-consistent and consistent with related models.

Although all the models I am cognizant of exist in my own subjective reality, many are apparently nearly identical to those in other minds. Thus, there is no “explosion of solipsism”. Humans have various methods for bringing their own subjective models of objective reality into alignment. In general, we experience personal and societal difficulties when we are not able to do this.

Beyond myself and others I’m connected to my ultimate concern is that we create and sustain over the long, long term a civilization in which every sort of life-enhancing human creativity thrives. Ala objective reality, nature has so constructed us that although this appears to be possible, it’s not a slam dunk, and in the past century has become increasingly fraught. To succeed we must learn, among other things, how to advance in the face of intractable differences in our subjective realities.

IV. Closing

Please excuse this lengthy comment. In the context of our on-going conversation, it is somewhat redundant. I do this partially because I expect to cite this comment in other contexts.

Notes
[1] I first described these aspects of consciousness in ‘Whose Reality?” (https://afrankackerman.substack.com/p/whose-reality ) more than two years ago. In your reply you referenced Kant and made some really cogent comments I have yet to really understand:

Hey Frank,
Since you have declared your Kantian split into objective-subjective as axiomatic, it would seem inevitable that I won’t sway you on this model. But I should like to add a pinch of doubt all the same!

The nature of the split into many-subjective, one-objective would not be problematic but for the attempts to elevate certain of the examples in the subjective set into having stronger claim to the objective one. If we could avoid this problem, I would have few concerns with this approach. But alas, it is abundantly clear that we have been unable to escape it.

I view this problem as rooted in the way the objective-and-subjective split has descended from Kant, and in so doing departed from his thinking, for Kant was extremely prudent about establish what *could not* be said about his ‘noumena’ (the objective realm). We have lost this caution, and with it come severe dangers.

My own sense is that our species’ tendency to seek certainty is what makes the many-one split dangerous to work with. I believe it can work - it worked for Kant, it clearly works well for you - but I feel that exploring different fundamental frameworks for understanding how all this fits together has become an urgent task. More on this on Stranger Worlds in September.

I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on Citizen Philosophers!

Chris.

Me: For the moment, though, I’ll forge ahead.

[2] Note that as stated above under ‘reality’ that in order to align with previous comments of yours, I’m ignoring all human-made entities.